Charlie. Stella left her door ajar. An hour
afterward, when Fyfe came down the hall, she rose. It had been her
purpose to call him in, to ask him to explain that which her brother had
hinted he could explain, what prior antagonism lay between him and
Monohan, what that "something" about Monohan was which differentiated
him from other men where she was concerned. Instead she shut the door,
slid the bolt home, and huddled in a chair with her face in her hands.

She could not discuss Monohan with him, with any one. Why should she
ask? she told herself. It was a closed book, a balanced account. One
does not revive dead issues.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE OPENING GUN

The month of November slid day by day into the limbo of the past. The
rains washed the land unceasingly. Gray veilings of mist and cloud
draped the mountain slopes. As drab a shade colored Stella Fyfe's daily
outlook. She was alone a great deal. Even when they were together, she
and her husband, words did not come easily between them. He was away a
great deal, seeking, she knew, the old panacea of work, hard,
unremitting work, to abate the ills of his spirit. She envied him that
outlet. Work for her there was none. The two Chinamen and Martha the
nurse left her no tasks. She could not read, for all their great store
of books and magazines; the printed page would lie idle in her lap, and
her gaze would wander off into vacancy, into that thought-world where
her spirit wandered in distress. The Abbeys were long gone; her brother
hard at his logging. There were no neighbors and no news. The savor was
gone out of everything. The only bright spot in her days was Jack
Junior, now toddling precociously on his sturdy legs, a dozen steps at a
time, crowing victoriously when he negotiated the passage from chair to
chair.

From the broad east windows of their house she saw all the traffic that
came and went on the upper reaches of Roaring Lake, Siwashes in dugouts
and fishing boats, hunters, prospectors. But more than any other she saw
the craft of her husband and Monohan, the powerful, black-hulled
_Panther_, the smaller, daintier _Waterbug_.

There was a big gasoline workboat, gray with a yellow funnel, that she
knew was Monohan's. And this craft bore past there often, inching its
downward way with swifters of logs, driving fast up-lake without a tow.
Monohan had abandoned work on the old Abbey-Monohan logging-grounds. The
camps and the bungalow lay deserted, giv